New Parts
As cars have evolved so have the ways we repair them. Now we look over here at this car we see that it has a fuse block. Well every car’s had that for years, but we may not see on many cars is something like this under that fuse block, which is a smart terminal block.
Now this has a mini computer in it. On the truck that this came out of, this controls the turn signals and brake lights and things like that. Somebody crossed a wire… it blew this assembly. You can't buy just the little controller in here. You have to buy the whole thing. By the time it's installed, roughly a thousand bucks.
Over here we have an intake manifold. In this intake manifold is an orifice….an orifice for the crankcase breather system. Now I tell you all the time to maintain the crankcase breather system. Well this person didn’t, and that meant that the orifice inside got so clogged up that it couldn't be cleaned. Well you can't buy the orifice got so clogged up inside that it couldn’t be cleaned. Well you can’t buy the orifice, and even if you could you can't replace it because it's molded into the intake manifold. So what wines up happening is that instead of a PCV valve we buy an entire intake manifold with sensors with fuel injectors with fuel rail and with the throttle body. Much cheaper back in the day when they had a PCV valve.
Alright cooling systems, we’re seeing a lot of plastic here. The plastic overtime it warps and loses its shape and so on, and we can see lines here where this one was leaking. Now what you do in many cases instead of replacing a thermostat you replace one of these great big assemblies. It may have valves and one or two or three thermostats in it and all these housing and everything which jacks the price way up. So if you get a high estimate on a repair, you want to look at what's going on because the way the manufacturer supplies parts these days, may be as an assembly and that costs more money.
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